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Larry, your overall point stands (especially b/c CM Punk derives his salary from a business that clearly benefits from steroids in a way that MLB couldn't even fathom), but this guy is legitimately straight edge. He took that element of his real life and incorporated it into his character.

Whether or not PEDs is a topic that has a moral high ground is debatable, but if it can, this guy would definitely represent it.

I always loved Shawn Michaels because he was able to be a marquee heavyweight champ in an age of roid monsters purely on the strength of his incredible workrate in the ring and on the mic...including selling for those useless roiders like a champ and making them look far better than they were.

Larry, your overall point stands (especially b/c CM Punk derives his salary from a business that clearly benefits from steroids in a way that MLB couldn't even fathom), but this guy is legitimately straight edge. He took that element of his real life and incorporated it into his character.

Whether or not PEDs is a topic that has a moral high ground is debatable, but if it can, this guy would definitely represent it.

I always loved Shawn Michaels because he was able to be a marquee heavyweight champ in an age of roid monsters purely on the strength of his incredible workrate in the ring and on the mic...including selling for those useless roiders like a champ and making them look far better than they were.

... While being completely ###### up on every drug imaginable.

I loved Michaels as a kid growing up in the 90s & still love his matches but the dude was a complete ####### through the mid- to late-90s. Just a horrible person in almost every way. I'm glad he's turned his life around.

As mentioned, Punk is pretty hardcore straight edge (although he does treat women like ####) and if you look at his body it's pretty clear he's not steroids or HGH or whatever. Actually, the WWE has a pretty strict drug policy, which even includes stuff like pot, and they're not afraid to hand out suspensions. Randy Orton, arguably the company's most popular worker, is one drug offense away from getting fired.

Professional wrestling is a proud American tradition. "Sports Entertainment" is a sniggering abomination and rightly eschewed by all decent people.

I feel for your pride in a once great sport, but when was the last time that a professional wrestling championship match wasn't staged? Back when Lou Thesz was the champ? Or do you have to go back to Earl Caddock?

While WWE does have a very strict drug policy on paper, my rough understanding is that if there's a loophole you could drive a Mack truck through in the form of TUE's. It's how someone like Ryback can keep his physique up while on the road.

Very excited for Punk-Lesnar & Bryan-Cena tomorrow.

Same here. I've actually found the build to Punk/Lesnar a little bit flatter than I expected it to be, but I am completely certain that Lesnar and Punk will steal the show. Bryan/Cena has all the makings of a 5* classic, but I just wonder about whether or not they'll be able to work around Cena's elbow. Then again, if any two performers can, it's these two.

I feel for your pride in a once great sport, but when was the last time that a professional wrestling championship match wasn't staged? Back when Lou Thesz was the champ? Or do you have to go back to Earl Caddock?

Oh we needn't go back to the days of Farmer Burns and Frank Gotch taking on all comers at state fairs. Once the WWF completely abandoned all pretense of legitimacy in their product, to the point of marketing reality shows showing the viewing audience how to fake a punch and jump into suplexes, wrestling lost its heart and became just another form of low theater. I still enjoy 80s NWA, thousands of hours of which are freely available on YouTube.

Same here. I've actually found the build to Punk/Lesnar a little bit flatter than I expected it to be, but I am completely certain that Lesnar and Punk will steal the show. Bryan/Cena has all the makings of a 5* classic, but I just wonder about whether or not they'll be able to work around Cena's elbow. Then again, if any two performers can, it's these two.

I've loved almost every minute of the Lesnar-Punk. So many great moments:
- Heyman turning on Punk at MitB, bashing his head with a ladder.
- The promo the night after MitB ("Daddy, why is Brock going to hurt Punk?")
- The beat downs (Brock F5's Punk onto a table, Punk smacks Brock with a camera)
- "Say something stupid Paul"
- Brock's video package interview on Punk.
The only thing that fell flat was Heyman's promo last week.

I hate how they've inserted HHH into the title match, so lame. This whole Vince-Stephanie-HHH feud is lame and we still have like 8 months of it.

And Dusty Rhodes, who drew huge money all over America in the 70s and 80s, wouldn't have a job were his prime self transported to the current WWE. He doesn't look like an action figure. He's a professional wrestler, not a sports entertainer.

And Dusty Rhodes, who drew huge money all over America in the 70s and 80s, wouldn't have a job were his prime self transported to the current WWE. He doesn't look like an action figure. He's a professional wrestler, not a sports entertainer.

Counterpoint: Daniel Bryan, who's more of a pro wrestler than Dusty ever was.

Hell, every current WWE title holder is an accomplished pro wrestler. Alberto Del Rio is a legend in Mexico. Roman Reigns & Curtis Axel come from wrestling families. Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose are indy legends. I won't argue for Cena but in 2013 he wrestled in arguably the best match I've ever seen on free TV, against Punk back in February.

I love Dusty, but his matches were generally #### and he was a horrible booker. ####### Bunkhouse Stampede? Seriously?

I agree with what YR is saying: that the complete abandonment of kayfabe has hurt wrestling. If you watch sometihng like, say, Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair, there isn't even the tiniest implication from anyone involved, from the referee, to the ring announcer, to, yes, the audience, that it is anything but a real heavyweight competitive championship match. Jim Ross calls it as straight as an arrow in his greatest work ever. They even had ringside scorekeepers (Terry Funk was one).

The absolute nadir of pro wrestling has to be the late 90s early aughts attitude era of WWF/E. It actually seems to be a bit more "wrestling" focused and kayfaby now than it was in the 90s.

Recommended reading for anyone who loves reading about or watching late 90s terrible, terrible WCW - WCW's Highway to Hell, one man's descent into madness as he watches all WCW television programming beginning in January 1999

Recommended reading for anyone who loves reading about or watching late 90s terrible, terrible WCW - WCW's Highway to Hell, one man's descent into madness as he watches all WCW television programming beginning in January 1999

That's amazing. I was watching at the time, and it was obviously going off the rails.

Oh we needn't go back to the days of Farmer Burns and Frank Gotch taking on all comers at state fairs. Once the WWF completely abandoned all pretense of legitimacy in their product, to the point of marketing reality shows showing the viewing audience how to fake a punch and jump into suplexes, wrestling lost its heart and became just another form of low theater. I still enjoy 80s NWA, thousands of hours of which are freely available on YouTube.

For a homoerotic machismo "sport" that typically shoots for the lowest common denominator, the buzz I get from reading various things is that homosexuality has been, at least internally, "well accepted" for a long time. Certainly in the WWE.

It's my understanding that there have been plenty of wrestlers who were known to their coworkers to be gay. But that's not necessarily going to translate into sensitive, tasteful angles, because, well, it's pro wrestling. The presence of non-American wrestlers never stopped anyone from doing crazy xenophobic stereotypes.

My dad went back to the days of professional wrestling as a competition sport. He told me why it had drifted into what has become the WWE. Dad saw a match involving Strangler Lewis, world champion at the time. The match took 2 hours, of which at least one and a half consisted of Lewis having his opponent in a headlock, while the opponent tried to keep blood flowing into his brain in the hopes of finally getting out of the hold. Finally, the opponent passed out and Lewis won. But dad said it was the most boring thing he ever had to watch. The crippling antics of Gotch were banned by then, and th4 sport had become very very static.

As for when it became scripted, I remember watching Wrestling at the Chase in St. Louis as a kid in the late 1950s. I saw Lou Thesz pretty much every week. It was obvious, even to me at that age, that Thesz was a superior wrestler to anyone else, but it was also obvious that the moves that the guys, even Thesz, were using were not possible without the help of the opponent, so the matches must have been scripted, or at least the winner was predetermined.

The urban legend, at that time, was that Thesz was the last actual competition world champion, but the rumor did not include a year. - Brock Hanke

When I moved from Hong Kong back to Taichung, Taiwan in 1993 they had just been expanding cable TV, and the only sports channel showed mostly WWF (before the name change).

I watched that with my two sons who were 10 & 7 at the time, usually with my wife in the background rolling her eyes. They figured out it was fake, but I kept insisting it wasn't. I had the younger one fooled until he was about 11. ;)

My dad went back to the days of professional wrestling as a competition sport. He told me why it had drifted into what has become the WWE. Dad saw a match involving Strangler Lewis, world champion at the time. The match took 2 hours, of which at least one and a half consisted of Lewis having his opponent in a headlock, while the opponent tried to keep blood flowing into his brain in the hopes of finally getting out of the hold. Finally, the opponent passed out and Lewis won. But dad said it was the most boring thing he ever had to watch. The crippling antics of Gotch were banned by then, and th4 sport had become very very static.

As for when it became scripted, I remember watching Wrestling at the Chase in St. Louis as a kid in the late 1950s. I saw Lou Thesz pretty much every week. It was obvious, even to me at that age, that Thesz was a superior wrestler to anyone else, but it was also obvious that the moves that the guys, even Thesz, were using were not possible without the help of the opponent, so the matches must have been scripted, or at least the winner was predetermined.

I went to my first and last night of pro wrestling in 1958, and remember one match in particular: Ricki Starr (pink tights, pink ballet slippers) vs. Karl Von Hess (a goateed, arch-villainous "Nazi" who sported a warmup jacket with an Iron Cross). From where I was sitting, I could see Starr scream in pain as Von Hess "bit" his ear, while in truth Von Hess's mouth was just pressing against Starr's head. And I also got to see one of the many "Hatpin Annies" do her thing, which was to jump out of the crowd and "stab" Von Hess with a "hatpin". I hadn't realized that was also bogus until several years later, when I learned it was just one more part of the choreography.

Funniest scene I ever saw in a TV wrestling match: Sometime in the mid-50's there was an infamous "villain" tag team of "Doctor" Jerry Graham and "Professor" Roy Shire, both of whom were bleached blond, slightly pot bellied middle aged surfer types who specialized in every dirty trick in the book. One night the "Professor" paralyzed his opponent into submission with a timely twist of the knuckle to the eye, and after the match the two fiends were continuing their act with the interviewer, who was also part of the show.

But this is what I'll never forget: When the interviewer asked the boys "How did you do it?", the two of them just smiled, while the "Doctor" tapped his head and gave a one word reply:

- Loved the Bryan/Cena match, so so so so much. The finish was outstanding and very Japanese. A new finisher debuted to take it to the next level. I loved everything about the next 10 minutes and it came off perfectly.
- Loved Punk/Lesnar even more if possible. The heyman interaction was fabulous, and jeebus, did they work a match. Very stiff, not very refined, but absolutely outstanding.
- Christian and ADR are great workers. They put together a much more memorable match than I was expecting, esp. out of that slot.
- The pacing of the PPV was weird, with more icing than I expected. I was also *VERY* surprised there wasn't more Darren Young interaction.

I'll have to agree with Weekly Journalist. The trend has been to go back to more physical matches, with less gimmickry. There's still going to be more winking at the camera, but the explosion of MMA has reduced the audience's interest in the loosey-goosey crap we saw from the midcard during the WWE Attitude era and the WCW uppercard during it's final 5 years. I don't think there are even any Wrestling _____(insert occupation)____ gimmicks in the WWE at the moment - the general motivation of most of the wrestlers on the roster is to beat up other guys and win belts. Even Kane and Undertaker, holdovers from a more gimmicky time, are generally focused on beating people up, not the craziness of their original back stories.

In the years since then, wrestling promoters have figured out that it works best if there's a guy in the ring that the audience is supposed to like.

What I didn't know when I posted #45 is that the promoter of most of those mid-50's matches in the northeast was one "Vincent J. McMahon," who was "the" Vince McMahon's father. The McMahons are actually a family dynasty whose roots go all the way back to the days of Tex Rickard and the first "Golden Age of Sport."

I'll have to agree with Weekly Journalist. The trend has been to go back to more physical matches, with less gimmickry. There's still going to be more winking at the camera, but the explosion of MMA has reduced the audience's interest in the loosey-goosey crap we saw from the midcard during the WWE Attitude era and the WCW uppercard during it's final 5 years. I don't think there are even any Wrestling _____(insert occupation)____ gimmicks in the WWE at the moment - the general motivation of most of the wrestlers on the roster is to beat up other guys and win belts.

Nah, their motivation is to be entertainers. It's baked in the crust now. It's openly admitted on their reality shows. Of course I don't expect Daniel Day Lewis to start slapping around Leonardo DiCaprio on the set of "Gangs of New York" but professional wrestling didn't used to be so overt about its clandestine nature. We're only a generation removed from kayfabe and "protecting the business".

Exotic Adrian Street was not gay! How many times I heard him insist during his run in Florida that he was the most manly man in the building, and that we Florida rednecks didn't understand how to appreciate a stylish and fabulous gentleman like himself.

Loved the Bryan/Cena match, so so so so much. The finish was outstanding and very Japanese. A new finisher debuted to take it to the next level. I loved everything about the next 10 minutes and it came off perfectly.

The running knee looked amazing, and that kind of violent finisher is a nice reminder, for a guy who always seems to win by submission, that he can be a badass as well. And it is perfectly in keeping with his kick-based offense.

I hope that they run this the way it should be - he's the underdog now, chasing the corporate champion, and after a few screwjobs and hurdles he gets a legitimate run with the title. I think you could stick him in the next PPV main event, screw him again, then put him in the Survivor Series main and have him lose a "you'll never get another title shot" kind of match. Then give him #1 in the Rumble, and let him win it, and have him take the title back at Wrestlemania.

Especially if you rebuild a stable around HHH/Orton, you could drag this out by having Bryan dispatch underlings for a few months (in the way that guys used to have to get through the Horsemen to get at Flair) so that you don't have to just stick him in the ring with Orton over and over.

What I hope they don't do is use this as an excuse to run another Cena/Orton program, and Bryan gets shuffled back down to the midcard. I think they're smart enough not to waste the kind of fan reaction Bryan is getting, but with McMahon you never know when he'll just decide he doesn't like someone.

The best gay wrestler was Goldust, who we were told was "playing mind games" by "using his sexuality as a weapon," particularly against the uber-manly man Razor Ramon who spent his time "oozing with machismo." One could call Goldust's pursuit of Mr. Ramon stalking. Eventually they had a match where Razor Ramon spun Goldust around and smacked him hard on the ass. But Goldust bent at the knees and shivered and licked his lips and rubbed himself up and down with his hands because he'd enjoyed it, sparking a fit of gay panic from Razor, who very badly needed the audience to know that that was NOT what he had intended. Ultimately the WWF chickened out and made Goldust just a weirdo, because promoting homoeroticism from wrestling subtext to wrestling text sparked a genuine gay panic among the wrestlers and the front office.

IMO the Money in the Bank gimmick is played out. It's a lame way to win a title. But if you're going to do it, last night was the way to do it I guess. I know I was screaming at my computer when HHH hit the pedigree on Bryan.

I really don't like the idea of 8 months of face Vince McMahon but if this leads to Bryan winning the Rumble and regaining the belt at WM, then that'll work. HHH & Orton work better as heels anyway.

Aside from Sandow losing this PPV was pretty amazing. Probably the PPV of the year so far, either that or NJPW's Dominion. Bryan-Cena might be my favorite match of the year so far.

And for those of you lost in the nostaglia of the 80s, you missed this last night. The American Dragon is amazing.

I marked out so hard when Bryan won but I knew what was coming from feel and an entire HHH guest ref appearance with no shenanigans.

It was incredibly well executed and as long as they do the ensuimg chase right they have turned Bryan into a Punk level star. I hope that at some point Zayn and Ohno get called up to wrestle some matches on his side against the more conventional style WWE heel stars.